Gary North on why "welfare" costs (aka health care and pension obligations) are killing General Motors -- and why hardly anybody saw this coming, even though the stage was set 55 years ago.

"Who Shot Mohammed Al-Dura?" Although this Atlantic article is nearly two years old now, it's a stunning cautionary tale for the media age. Mohammed Al-Dura was the 12-year-old Palestinian boy shot to death as he and his father cowered beside a wall. The media told us -- and the entire Arab world believes -- that Israeli soldiers did it. But did they? Or, for that matter, was any little boy ever killed in that place, at that moment, at all?

"Who Shot Mohammed Al-Dura?" also shows the power of myth and spin; billions believe what they want to believe, despite unclear, contradictory evidence. And once the story has life of its own, almost no one on any side wants to challenge it.